3. Of course I totally disagree w/ your first comment,

I haven't been keeping stats. I find that 'disturbing' on many levels. Just noticed more of it, lately. Not arguing a reason as to the 'goodness' or 'badness' of guns, just pointing out 'It is what it is'.

4. This just adds to why I have been depressed recently...

Was talking about it with friends recently, and we all kind of agreed.

For years, amid the occasional turmoil it looked like things were getting better. Europe was living in peace for the first time in 2000 years, and with walls falling, using its energy for building the future instead of for war.

Asia was healing its wounds, with China becoming less a military threat than a commercial one. After all the whining, competition is good, and brings out some of the best in us. Having Japan, China, and S.Korea as competitors rather than enemies was working. SE Asia was settling down after getting rid of Pol Pot without sending an army in. Africa seemed like it was getting rid of its dictators, and, like South America, was growing into the modern world.

Here in the US, we finally got rid of the last of racism, legally, anyway, Women and minorities were having a voice, the environment was being cleaned up, human rights were in the forefront and things seemed a little better all around. Maybe a tep backward for every two step forward, but it looked like we have a future.

But now, not only am I getting older and have less of future to look forward to, things have changed for the worse. Walls are going up, inequalities are rising, more wars and rumors of war and while in the past I felt things will be getting better, now I feel like it's all over. In the five or 10 years I have left, I see nothing but more troubles.

I think the kids out there are great, and will be our future if we give them a chance. But we're not giving them one.

7. I'm aware of that, but it's not so much the world-- it's me...

I was a boomer kid-- my father saw combat in WWII, so I got a good education why we should avoid war-- but fight well if we can't. I was a part of the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement... Movements, movements... All the time movements...

Through it all I looked to the future. Things were getting better. Slowly, but better. And the future was something to look forward to. I never worried about setbacks, because eventually they will be set right.

No more. We're in a down cycle, and I'm not sure I have enough time left to see it swing up again. I shouldn't let it bother me and just go on, but it's damn difficult.

9. What?

I read this from your post...

"Europe was living in peace for the first time in 2000 years, and with walls falling, using its energy for building the future instead of for war.

Asia was healing its wounds, with China becoming less a military threat than a commercial one. After all the whining, competition is good, and brings out some of the best in us. Having Japan, China, and S.Korea as competitors rather than enemies was working. SE Asia was settling down after getting rid of Pol Pot without sending an army in. Africa seemed like it was getting rid of its dictators, and, like South America, was growing into the modern world.

Here in the US, we finally got rid of the last of racism, legally, anyway, Women and minorities were having a voice, the environment was being cleaned up, human rights were in the forefront and things seemed a little better all around. Maybe a tep backward for every two step forward, but it looked like we have a future.

My question is " What FUCKING PLANET were you living on.?

I watched the news and read the news over the past 20 years and this is not what I saw at all; Were you paying attention or is this just a post of the world as seen through rose colored glasses?

The wall fell and we went into one of the worst global recessions in decades. People lost their jobs, we had the largest transfer of capital between east and west ever and it did not improve things in Russia or much in Europe.

In Africa groups like Army of God became ascendant and killed untold hundreds of thousands, we had the largest genocide in the shortest amount of time EVER in Rwanda.

Terrorist attacks around the world became far more common with an untild loss of life.

We continued to over populate our plant over use our resources and find ways to make ourselves feel good about it.

If you want to make the world a better place take the rose colored glasses off and tell your children the truth about the human condition.

10. Hold on a minute. I never said things are good. Just a little better, with...

the the best possibilities for a better future in many years.

And speaking of Africa, right now in south Sudan things are so bad that OXFAM is afraid to go in and help with the famine. You don't hear about that when some people talk about dead kids. You don't solve crop failures with missiles. It takes hard work and real money. And maybe some shooting after all if the crazies running things don't let you in. Starving people in Africa? Who gives a shit when it's all cost and no benefit to help.

In grade school we had the Duck&Cover drills and later we thought we might have to use them during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kinda envied the bomb shelter crowd.

Kennedy got shot when I was in High School and with all the conspiracy nuttery going around I became a serious news junkie. Learned a lot of stuff about how the world really worked.

Then King got shot. And we took a step back.

That was just some of the bad stuff, as you say, but we are a bad species. Given a choice, too often we'll fight to the death instead of talking it out.

My point is only that there was a light at the end of the tunnel-- a tiny flicker, but a light nonetheless. That light may have gone out.

12. I understand that

But that little flicker has always been there and humanities ability to bring it to fruition has not yet sparked. We have cycles to go through for many generation I think before we can get there. I am saying that we as a people have to forego nostalgia for times that never really existed while being beams of light for each other......

6. And you blame the gun?

I'll tell you the same thing I told another poster:

Gun control laws are a symptom of unwillingness to focus on problem people and leave the guns alone, which is in fact, the real problem.

Nothing short of complete and total governmental control of all firearms will be gun control enough to truly mitigate these problems, and complete and total governmental control of all firearms is simply not going to happen without a civil war being fought over it.

So here we are.

Focus on the individual, not the gun. Change the laws to reflect reality. If someone - in the violent criminal sense - can not be trusted by society to have a gun, then in reality he can not be trusted to be free to walk among the rest of us who can. People aren't born into that category. They make conscious decisions and take deliberate actions based on them, that self select themselves into that category.

Remove them from society and do not let them return until and unless they can be trusted with a gun.

8. my cousin was a rapid liberal ,

he hated people owning AR-15's ,he committed suice by taking sleeping pills ,wine ,and slitting his wrist ,so how is no guns being around ,would have stopped him from doing his deed? more liberal agenda hoopla